Will parents pay more for better food?

[Lee-Bee]

Out of curiosity why are you asking?

Are you asking because you want to try and charge more by providing healthy meals. Or are you asking because your family eats healthy meals (organic, from scratch etc) and you want to charge more to cover the costs?

I don't think you can recoup the costs of buying organic to charge more daily. I would not recommend changing your usual ways just to advertise being different. The cost and work involved would not pay off.

BUT if you on your own buy organic or eat fully from scratch then by all means you can attempt to leverage that by increasing your fees a little bit.

Personally I gave a sample 4 week menu of what we would eat but left it at that.
We do have weekly organic delivery to our house and I attempt to make most our foods from scratch (bread etc). But I LOVE having not promised this as when things are hectic or I am lazy I can buy a good loaf of bread...or when there is a good sale on non-organic fruit I can buy it without thought of having "lied" to the parents.

Also, if one started off saying "all organic" or "all homemade" when this isn't their usual way then it can be a bit dicey when a few weeks/months in they realize they cannot maintain that promise.

[MommaL]

Out of curiosity why are you asking?

I guess I feel a bit bitter when I hear about daycares charging the same and they're only spending $3 for a couple boxes of Kraft dinner which takes 5 minutes to make. Whereas to make a homemade, nutritious meal it might cost $30 and can take an hour to make. I want to serve healthy, but I guess I want to feel like it's worth the money and time to do so. I'm just sure if parents really think about the cost of food when choosing a daycare and therefore will be scared away by the higher rates.